Recruitment
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Summary: Another look at how B'Elanna might have come to join the Maquis. Perhaps it was the mysterious stranger she met at the bar.


TITLE: Recruitment  
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
FEEDBACK TO: shafshir@microconnect.net  
RATING: PG (mild language)  
PART: 1/1  
CODES: C & T  
ARCHIVE: Sure, why not? Just let me know.  
DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns everything - but you already knew that. g  
SUMMARY: Another look at how B'Elanna might have come to join the Maquis. Originally published in "Delta Quadrant 2", edited by Marge Robles and Elizabeth Knauel.  
  
  
Recruitment  
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
  
  
So what if she'd been fired? She hadn't wanted the damned job anyway. It was an insult to her ability and intelligence to put her in the position of picking up after a half-witted crew of mechanical morons who wouldn't have half as much trouble with their equipment if they would only *madre de Dios* remember to see if the triple-damned power toggle was in the "on" position before they screamed for maintenance!  
  
  
Torres slammed her mug back, throwing a challenging look around the dark, tiny bar. She had no particular friends here, but she was a regular enough customer that the other patrons knew what to anticipate when she was in a foul mood. Nobody met her eye.  
  
  
Almost nobody. One man looked back calmly, directly.  
  
  
//Him again.//  
  
  
He was a human of perhaps thirty-five or forty, a broad-shouldered, powerful-looking man with dark, close-cropped hair and a complexion swarthy as a Klingon's (a resemblance that did nothing to endear him to Torres). She'd seen him in this bar several times in the past couple of weeks. Invariably dressed in a plain workman's coverall, he always sat alone, nursing one or two drinks as he looked out from a small table, studying the crowd with observant brown eyes.  
  
More often than not, she realized, studying her, exactly as he was doing now.  
  
Torres swore under her breath. If she'd wanted to be watched like a microbe on a slide, she would have stayed at Starfleet Academy. At least there she'd have had a shot at a better job than factory mech. //And better liquor than this!//  
  
Her glare did nothing to make the watcher avert his gaze. Getting up, she shoved her chair back with enough force to tip it, and stalked over to him. Slapping her mug down on his table, she snarled, "All right, buddy -- what the hell do you want?"  
  
  
He seemed startled, but not alarmed. "As it happens, Ms. Torres," he said calmly, "I'd like to speak to you." He toed a chair back from the table, gesturing toward the seat with one big hand.  
  
  
She ignored the offer. "I'll just bet you would." Out of work she might be, but damned if she was reduced to keeping company with anyone who had the price of a drink.  
  
  
His expression was more composed than anyone's who drank in this dive had a right to be. "About a job, Ms. Torres." The words were so perfectly level, so free of any hint of lasciviousness or double entendre, that try as she might Torres couldn't find anything more to offend her. "One a little more worthy of your skills. Now -- I'd rather not draw any more attention than we've already gotten, so I'd appreciate it if you'd sit down."  
  
  
Almost to her own surprise, she obeyed. Against her will, something about this man drew Torres; she hadn't seen anyone with such self-control since -- since her days at the Academy. Resisting the tug of attraction as well as the tug of memory, she snapped mutinously, "Why? You afraid of attention?"  
  
  
She had the satisfaction of seeing a brief flash of what might have been annoyance or frustration in his eyes. "Not afraid," he answered, the tiniest hint of an edge to his quiet voice. "But some things aren't -- wise."  
  
  
"Really?" So he *did* have some reason to be wary. Well, good; that was an edge she held over him, one she could use if he provoked her. Feeling more comfortable, she pulled the chair in. "Why is that?"  
  
  
"Would you rather needle me, or hear about the job?"  
  
  
Again she had that pull of almost-instinctive respect she might have felt toward some particularly worthy officer at the Academy; again, she wanted to resist it but couldn't. "I'm listening," she said grudgingly.  
  
  
He regarded her with steady eyes. "I hear you're something of a rebel, Ms. Torres. Is that true?"  
  
  
The seeming change of subject startled her a bit. "Who told you -- I mean," she tried to recover, "I hear the same thing." She added, defensively, "What's it to you?"  
  
  
"Not much." The humor was as dark as the color of his eyes. "Actually, I'm something of a rebel myself."  
  
  
"Are you?" That was a new concept, that someone who acted so much the model of propriety could possibly be classified in the same category as Torres herself. Yet there was the contrast between the man's proud bearing and his plain workman's clothes, and there was his wish to avoid attention....Even in the dim light, she could see that the coloring at one of his temples was flat and uneven, an imperfect match for his swarthy complexion. It looked almost as if someone had smeared makeup there, trying to hide some distinguishing mark -  
  
  
"I am indeed," he answered gravely.  
  
  
//Is he on the run?// she wondered. //From who? He doesn't look like a smuggler or a pirate.//  
  
  
His voice pulled her attention from her thoughts. "The only reason whether you're a rebel concerns me, Ms. Torres, is that right now I'm looking for rebels. I and -- some of my associates -- are very much in the market for people who aren't happy with the status quo, especially skilled people like you."  
  
  
Maybe he *was* a pirate. "To do what?" she asked, curiously. She couldn't get along with officers or bureaucrats, but most pirates (even if this man was an exception) were notoriously volatile types. She might be able to get along with pirates....  
  
  
"That depends on their skills." He locked his eyes with hers. "In your case, maintaining starships."  
  
  
"*What?*" Speculation vanished in a burst of hope mingled with fear. Torres had always wanted to work on starships. She'd gone to Starfleet Academy in hopes of winning a place on a starship, had realized when she left the academy that the prospect was forever closed to her. The Klingon navy wouldn't have her because of her father's blood, and private shipbuilders and spacelines wouldn't consider her because of her lack of education. And so she'd gone to work, in a series of jobs too much like the one she'd just lost, meaningless low-level mechanic's jobs for dead-end little companies in the middle of nowhere. After she'd lost her dream of starships, no other dream seemed worth the bother....//If this is a real offer, she told herself, I can't refuse.  
  
//If it's a joke, I'll kill him.//  
  
  
"How is that possible?" she asked tensely, eyes fixed on the man as if he might try to get away, and take his offer with him. "Who are you?"  
  
  
He hesitated. "My name isn't important."  
  
  
"*Who are you?*" She was raising her voice, attracting exactly the kind of attention he'd said he didn't want. She didn't care.  
  
  
"They call me Shadow Hunter," he said hastily, in an obvious attempt to quiet her.  
  
  
She lowered her voice. "They who? Who do you know that you can sit there and offer me starships?"  
  
  
"They --" He appeared to be engaging in some kind of silent struggle with himself before he spoke again. "Ms. Torres," he asked finally, "what do you know about politics in this sector of space?"  
  
  
"I know things are pretty heated." The volatility of the region was one of the things that had attracted Torres to it -- that and the sense of being as much on the frontier as most civilians were likely to get. "Since the peace treaty shifted the Cardassian border in this direction, anyway."  
  
  
"You mean, since it handed dozens of Federation colony planets over to the tender mercies of the Cardassians." For the first time, Torres saw anger in the calm man, as his full lips thinned and his dark eyes narrowed. "Since it left millions of colonists with the choice between exile and slavery, sometimes between exile and death. And some of those colonists old men, and children -- " He cut himself off, and she thought, suddenly, that the rage he seemed to be suppressing might burn as white-hot as any of her own, if he would only unleash it. "Oh, yes," he said finally, heavily, bitterly, "that's made things pretty heated." His big hands had tightened to fists on the tabletop. "And they'll be a lot hotter before we're done, I promise you that."  
  
  
"We?" she said, almost involuntarily. Then she realized what he must be: one of the borderworld renegades she'd begun hearing about. "Maquis," she murmured, remembering the name. "You're Maquis, aren't you?"  
  
  
"That's what we call ourselves, yes." He held her gaze with his own dark, compelling one. "Join us, Ms. Torres. It's a fight worth a warrior -- and work worth an engineer." His hand closed tightly over hers, as warm as a human's but almost stronger than a human's should be. "The ships -- they're small, Ms. Torres, and they're old, but they're starships all right. They're yours to work on, yours to fly on, if you want --"  
  
  
He broke off abruptly, his eyes moving from her face to a spot over her shoulder. The emotion vanished from his face as quickly as if he'd donned a mask. "Excuse me."  
  
  
Torres turned, and saw two men in the black-and-gold of Starfleet security standing in the doorway. Both of them held phasers, the weapons trained in her general direction. She turned back to her companion, and saw that he'd risen, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet like a dancer, like a fighter.  
  
At the presence of the unfamiliar, and in this locale somewhat dreaded, uniforms, the bar was suddenly, hideously, inappropriately quiet. One officer's voice rang through the silence. "Commander Chakotay."  
  
"If you know who I am," Torres' companion said, very calm, "then you know that I resigned my commission months ago. If a private citizen can't share a drink with a attractive woman --"  
  
  
The officer overrode him. "It's my duty to inform you, sir, that you've been charged with treason and terroristic activity. You'll have to come with us."  
  
When the big man - //Chakotay,// Torres told herself -- did not move immediately, the two Fleeters took a few steps into the room. Torres saw him wave them to stillness, still perfectly composed. "No sense damaging the bar, gentlemen, even such as it is. I'm coming." He walked toward the security men -  
  
  
And several things happened very quickly. Chakotay's arm came up in a powerful forearm smash, neatly dropping one opponent, even as his leg swept out to knock the other to the floor. Conscious and still holding his phaser, the second one raised his hand to fire -- but Chakotay's boot found his wrist, pinning his arm to the floor.  
  
  
Torres never knew what caught her attention, a flash of movement or a sound or maybe just battle instincts, but she turned her head to one side and saw that a woman had risen, dressed in the bland coverall of a factory tech but holding a small Starfleet-issue phaser. The weapon was aimed at Chakotay.  
  
  
Torres didn't know if it was the image of the promised starship in her mind, or only the image of the big Maquis stunned and helpless, but she acted from instinct. Snatching up her heavy clay mug, she hurled it across the room. It made contact with a loud crack, and the phaser-wielding woman went down with a howl, clutching at her arm.  
  
  
Meanwhile, Chakotay had dispensed with his remaining opponent, and was plucking the man's weapon from slack fingers. "Good reflexes, Torres. Thanks." With a sudden grin, he tossed her the phaser; with a matching one, she snatched it out of the air. "Come on." He walked out quickly.  
  
  
She followed him out then, to his starships and his rebellion. And she never looked back.  
  
END 


End file.
